Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Mockingjay: How to properly preform a revolution or revolt.

I saw the latest hunger games this past weekend. We'd watched the first two and I had been really impressed with Catching Fire. Great plot, great characters and you could really see how the whole series of events was designed to make Katniss into a 'hero'. Mockingjay: Part 1 continued with a lot of the good character development that we'd come to expect and plot wise it did several other things really well. I really liked how Katniss wasn't forced into being a soldier; just because she survived the games doesn't really qualify her for real combat, she has no experience on a battlefield. I'm sure in the last of the series, that will change but such is life and Hollywood.

What bothered me most was the way the common men and women went about revolting. In both cases the emphasis was on sacrifice instead of a tactical goal and preserving life. While sacrifice is both noble and inspiring on screen, it doesn't make sense in warfare when simple alternatives present themselves. While I can understand that these are simple people, it makes perfect sense for District 13 to have agents planted to help organize efforts. And to supply them. The Dam sabotage scene is a great example.

Let's say that the bombs make sense since they need explosives for their work. Let's say District 13 is taking a hands off approach to helping. Let's just assume that. The people came in mass because they knew most of them would be human shields that wouldn't make it out of there alive. I have no idea what kinds of firearms those white mask guys are packing, but the bullets seemed to be stopped by a human body. Now if it were me and I had an ounce of self preservation, I'd have rigged up some kind of shield, medieval siege engine style. I think that makes sense, right? Stop half those bullets and save a ton of lives. Now if District 13 had supplied them with even small amounts of fire power, then everyone's getting out alive, right? I mean, those poor guys walked pretty much right up to the spillways in the fog before anyone said boo. Rockets launched from under cover would have done pretty much the same thing as their bombs in a box. I saw the District 13 weapons depot, those guys HAVE rockets.

Anyway, it was a very dramatic scene. People dying for their freedom etc, but I couldn't help but wonder if properly led why the Capitol wouldn't have fallen years ago when they seem to be falling now to a bunch of ticked off peasants with death wishes.